Chiron Academy

Interlude 4: To the woman Violette from Nemhet, son of Hotep, child of Egypt

To the woman, Violette,

I feel like I owe you some explanation. Maybe I don't. But if I were you, I think I would want one. I'm not sure if I am supposed to contact you. Unlike everything else I have done in regards to you, I do this not because I have been instructed to, but because I want to.

I will understand if you do not read this letter. It is uncomfortable to write, I can only imagine how it must feel to read. I am sure by now that you can guess my mission, what I am to do. But it ocurrs to me that you do not know why. And it brings me terrible shame that someone must die and them not even know the reasonings for their demise.

I am Nemhet, the son of Hotep. And I am the cause of your recent misfortune.

I am, like you, very old, though you manage to hide your ancient visage better than I. I am in a way both your junior and your senior, for while you have had more days under the sun (I arose much more recently, in 1936), my death lies back much farther in time than your own.

Assuming you are still reading and not have torn up this letter, as I suppose is your right, I shall begin. The tale mostly consists of a dream I had some months back. Now, dreams come and go like the flowing of the Nile and one would do well not to dwell too much on their import. However, I rarely dream and have not since my embalming. Perhaps I have wondered, it is hard to dream without a brain. (I wonder if you dream. What greets your eyes when you close them for the night?)

This dream will draw on elements of ancient Egyptian religion, which I am aware may not be known to you.

I try to include for you the necessary background as I go along for the the story I am about to tell will be of little import and difficult to parse without it. I myself spent many an hour as a youth studying the words that would guide my journey into the afterlife so I shall try my best to explain.

Much like in Christianity, which I assume you are more familiar given your British upbringing, when you die, there is a judgment. You must stand before the gods: Osiris, the god of the dead. Anubis. And Ma'at the goddess of Truth and Justice. And your heart is placed on a scale and you are questioned. Your heart knows if you are lying or not and if your words are false, they will grow heavy. If your words are truthful, your heart is light, weighing the same as a feather. If not, your heart is eaten by the goddess Ammit. (This is of course assuming that you are able to survive the journey to the halls of Ma'at, but I want to keep this explanation short for clarity.)

That's a very basic retelling of the process, it leaves out for instance the negative testimonies that you make of your innocence to various gods during the questioning process. But it gives you an inkling of what I am talking about.

Indeed, there is actually a great deal more that goes into the process of life after death. The Book of Coming Forth By Day, or the Book of the Dead as it known in English, is an entire book after all and this only a short letter. It was not known by many even in my own time, when the New Kingdom was new and the Old Kingdom was slightly less old. And the Middle Kingdom was equally middle. (I hope you will forgive me this briefest moment of levity.) Few were privileged to know the ways of ritual mummification and the information necessary to the navigation of the Duat, the lands of the afterlife. For many ages, the knowledge was kept solely to the pharaoh themselves and only later did it spread out to others. In my time it had spread out to include priests and members of the lesser families, though was still kept from the masses. What becomes of them, the unlucky lowborn who were not blessed with access to the necessary knowledge to even reach the Halls of Ma'at? Does Anubis still weigh their hearts? Are the good still blessed for their works? Or are they left to wander the earth for eternity as miserable ghosts like the unjust? Seeing as I have not viewed their judgement, I cannot say, but long has the subject torn at me.